More Yarns to be Told
by Psychopomposity
Summary: After setting out on a wager to investigate an abandoned town, a young Quincey Morris has a brush with the supernatural.


Warnings: Contains violence, allusions to abuse (and a brief mention of a suicide), and period typical anti-Mormonism.

* * *

Quincey's lone horse dragged across the dusty yellows and greens of the dwindling prairie, the saddle bags barely bobbing against its flanks as its rider lazily surveyed the flat expanse for any sign of a landmark. There wasn't any reason to hurry. It was a good month and a half before he was due for another farewell to the States, and with nothing else to do, it seemed worthwhile enough to look into one of the odd mysteries left in Texas before he saw what the newly opened hermit kingdom had to offer. The whole mess, wager and all, was an ideal opportunity to live up to his reputation, if not to recoup a few minor losses along the way, and although he anticipated no actual trouble, he figured spending a night in a ghost town purported to have some genuine ghosts was the sort of thing he could spin into a good yarn: something to frighten some pretty girl who hadn't stepped outside of her drawing-room such that a man might catch her as she fainted.

The beginning to this particular tale was picturesque enough: ideal grist for the mill. He had been losing a steady stream of poker games at the sort of establishment that neither the august Lord Goldaming nor the aloof Deacon Morris would have wished their sons to frequent, and somehow or another, he'd managed to come out with both sufficient funds for the Korea expedition and the good graces of the other players when the cards were finally laid to rest. As everyone involved began to put their winnings towards more potable entertainments, the conversation had turned to tale telling: people swapping boasts about what and how many they'd killed in between anecdotes about women who probably wouldn't care to have their names repeated.

The whole table had gotten worked up enough after a few rounds that it hadn't been a surprise when things spun from the improbable to the fantastical. It had been O'Grady, a squat little man with oval spectacles, who had turned the topic to ghosts. His father had been at Shiloh and told him that on the first day, the bodies had lain so thick that there were none left to bury them but themselves. "Nobody could get the dead off the field, such that the poor lads climbed up from the muddy earth and walked themselves into the wagons." A round of skeptical jeers had sounded after that. "Seems as though some of the 'dead' weren't dead yet," someone declared in dismissal. The thought of men so mangled that they could be taken as specters was somehow more palatable.

As robust as these initial doubts might have been, a similar stream of anecdotes followed in the first tale's wake, and it soon came to be clear that almost everyone talking had some spook they'd swear by. Somebody's maiden aunt had been visited yearly by the beau who'd died before marrying her. Someone else had crossed a woman who knew how to set a goofer and his orchard had withered, nectarines and peaches shriveling down until they looked like pinched little skulls on the branch. Even Art, fish out of water that he was, had managed to concoct something about the untouched building at Ring, where a caretaker had apparently hung himself back in the days of William and Mary. Quincey, however, for all he'd seen an awful lot in his short life, ran contrary to the crowd when it came to ghosts. He didn't believe in them and he'd said as much.

His incredulity was what had caused the stranger to interject, as a man of strange convictions is apt to speak up when he finds himself, even unwittingly, accused of a lie.

"If'n you don't believe, son, why don't you go down to Deseret Flat and bring us back some of old Stodd's gold."

The room had gone silent as a sun-burnt stub of a man emerged from a dark corner to lay his hands on the poker table. The locals had looked to one another with knowing glances as Quincey'd lazily set down his glass and cocked his head.

"Deseret Flat? Pardon me if I'm unfamiliar with it, sir?"

"I'm bettin' you is! Man don't walk under a roof within fifty miles of Deseret Flat and tell folk there ain't no such things as ghosts, not unless he's willin' to prove it."

"Well, tell me the story then." He'd crossed his arms. "And I'll see what apologies need be proffered?"

Art'd shot Quincey a look just short of an outright grimace as he turned his half-full tumbler round in his hand. It had been clear that this was shaping into something that could at best be an altercation and at worst a proper adventure, and the young Englishman wasn't particularly in the mood for either at that hour of the night. The stranger, whom Quincey would later learn went by the name of Riley, began his tale irregardless of the young man's discomfort.

"It was back in '78 went it happen'd, but before that as long as a body might care to remember, there was a black-hearted bastard named Ezekiel Stodd livin' in these parts. Nobody knew him or particularly wanted to know him, but everyone knew _about_ him, and knew that he had a fortune in gold. Nobody had a clue's to where where he'd got it, though. Folks love to tell that he was a profiteer during the war, or that he did some black business as regards the Apaches. I think it was passed round one month that he was a flesh-and-blood Bluebeard, with the bodies of seventeen women buried 'neath his floorboards. The month after that it went that he'd found a rattlesnake cave down south full of conquistador money. No man ever really knew why he was rich though, and if'n there's any villainy to it, it'd be another ghost story altogether.

"Anyway, it happened that this old devotee of Mammon had a change of faith one day, got himself caught under the shadow of Joseph Smith when some of the folks who were raised up by Wright made their way out here to preach. I can't rightly say if'n Stodd believed or if'n he had some less than savory motive for falling in with 'em, but when the rest of us were set to run the whole lot out of town, Stodd threw down his wallet and made plans to pull up and help lead the little group into their own private promised land south of Utah. So the preachers and their company and the handful of people who'd taken to 'em headed out into the prairie and founded Deseret Flat, and all in all it settled fine with most of us."

"Most of you? Who didn't it settle with?"

"Those folks whose family'd left 'em. You can't expect that everyone who'd followed their Moses out into the desert had done so with all ties clean cut."

"I s'pose not."

"And just as you'd expect, some of 'em – wronged wives and disinherited children and such – some of 'em went to try to find their kin at Deseret Flat and sway 'em back."

"Makes sense."

"And that's where things go to the ghosts, son. It was one day mid July next year that Richard Talfort, on behalf of his poor abandoned sister-in-law, went out to try to talk reason to his brother Thomas... only when he got there the entire town was bereft. _Bereft. _Not a soul in sight. Only it weren't that the pilgrims had just packed up and headed nowhere. Old Dick looked bout and saw it was as if everyone had vanished where they stood... grain still in the the silo... shops standing with open doors... books open in the school room... It was as if the whole blighted town'd gone on to its day of judgement ahead of schedule."

"And that's your ghost story?" Quincey had asked.

"You don't reckon it qualifies?"

"I reckon there's many an explanation there that doesn't involve ghosts."

"Like I said, you can go yourself an' prove me wrong? Many folks did after Dick, and you know what came of 'em?"

Quincey'd shrugged his shoulders in surrender.

"Disappeared like the rest of Deseret Flat – all of 'em – at least all of 'em that stayed the night. Sure there've been men bold enough to go an' look, to see what remains an' to ride back, but nobody... nobody with avarice enough in their heart to look more than a day for that treasure ever comes back. The sun sets on 'em and they don't rise to see dawn."

"How would you know?" Quincey'd asked. "The mystery remains open. You don't know what a disappeared man has or hasn't seen."

"I know that Mack Otwell rode out five Junes ago and didn't come back, and that before him Bobby Harper did the same. I know that nobody's ever seen Deseret Flat by night and nobody with sense wants to, and if that place isn't evidence of ghosts or at least of their near relations, I can't say what is, because I'm not fool enough to look into it."

"It seems you haven't much evidence then," Quincey'd said laconically, ignoring another wincing expression from Arthur. "If nobody will brave the town by night it doesn't seem right to hang your hat on ghosts."

"Well then," Riley'd said with an open hand and a bow, "My invitation stands."

Quincey had looked around the table, and had seen that the others had a look of expectation shared among them, eager for him to either accept the challenge or announce his surrender. He'd shot a grin toward his companion, stretching his palm toward the storyteller.

"What'll you wager?"

That'd been that. There'd been a cacophony of guffaws and gasps, and the bartender had given a quick shout and a clap which had failed to ignite any applause. The rowdy bunch, brains excited by spirits of one sort or another, were quick to pool back Quincey's lost winnings and more for the promise of the venture. Three day's ride out, a night in Deseret Flat, and three back: it was one less week to lie bored and listless while he waited for the_ Albatross_ to come to port way out in Galveston, and with a little luck he'd be paid for his troubles.

So here he was, a bleached and nameless countryside rolling all around him. Art, despite his proven bravery in any number of more mundane circumstances, had declined to accompany him, claiming that the money was no loss and that the adventure itself was a foolish one. He'd done his best, in his quintessentially English way, to argue that he held his position from reason, but as far as Quincey was concerned reason was at the crux of the gamble and if Arthur wasn't up to coming he'd better let him have his way. Neither the Marquesans nor the empty gloom of the Pampas had killed him, and he'd felt assured that nothing a mere three days out of civilization would do better.

* * *

All that was two and a little more than a half days behind him now, and as stoic as he'd been at the outset, the loneliness of the unsettled land had given him plenty of time for reflection. He wouldn't say he was frightened, but all the various rational reasons for men to disappear had flitted though his mind on the journey, and he was only half-certain they could all be tended to with a pistol and a bowie. He'd considered, of course, merely setting up camp and wasting a few days out in the wild before heading home, but as it stood there wasn't enough fear in Quincey's heart to make breaking his word seem like an option, and he hoped, no matter how badly things panned out, that there never would be.

It was mid-afternoon when the horse started from under him as the skyline changed. In the distance, he saw the dark boxy forms of man-made buildings, and he knew that he would make it to the town no later than twilight, assuming the directions given him had been accurate. His horse whinnied and shook at the darkening horizon, and while he tried not to let the animal's alarm faze him, Quincey couldn't help but feel a little bit of melancholy hanging in the air around him, as he supposed one must always feel when heading anywhere truly abandoned. A half-decayed sign reading D SER T LAT grew visible around the same time that the moon rose against the blue sky, and he passed through its weathered wooden arch as the swell of crickets began to announce the coming of evening.

The town was just as had been described. After hitching his horse and stretching his legs, he found that the storyteller had little exaggerated. The general store into which he walked lay still with its stock untouched by anything save weevils and rust. The schoolroom was silent, slates still littering the chairs and floor with half drawn letters. The church... or meeting-house... or whatever it was Mormons went to on Sundays, had hymnals still open to the same page, "Awake, Ye Saints of God, Awake!" still waiting to be sung. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he took it all in, knowing as he did that whoever had come here before him had not managed to change the scene, which had lain untouched for more than a decade.

Taking his investigation further, he cast open the doors of strangers' houses, looking for evidence of either ghosts or gold. He found them all as he'd expected: houses full of human artifacts left as though their owners would appear any minute to claim them from the dust. He supposed that that part of the story had never been worth much doubt, but to be confronted with the macabre reality of the place made his skin crawl. You couldn't communicate what it felt like over a poker table. There were tables half-cleared from brunch, the crusted remains of corn mush still clinging to the bowls. There were books face down on the floor, unread over the years as they waited for somebody to right them. Most chilling of all were the dolls and blocks and hobby horses, all abandoned without anybody to collect them back to their respective homes.

He wandered his way through this rotted, dusty maze of cabins and shacks, wondering how many people had ever lived in Deseret Flat as he tried to find something to explain the circumstances before him. Sunset was still the good hour off when he came to a building some ways off from the others, whose purpose – if it had one – thoroughly escaped him. It was of a less rude construction than much of the rest of the town, saving the church, its roof tiled with slate and its walls still showing the remnants of whitewash. He wondered to himself if this had been Stodd's home. To his surprise, the door swung open of its own accord as he reached for it, as though some damnable spirit with an eye for atmosphere were beckoning him thither.

The first thing he noticed, honest truth be told, was that there was next to no dust on the floor. It took him a handful of seconds to take in the rest, and to recognize that there, in the middle of the bare and undecorated main-room, lay the white form of a man's corpse, its head severed from its neck and placed atop its body.

Quincey reached for the handle of his gun as he hurriedly stepped back outside. His first instinct was to run, to get back on his horse and to set off across the prairie again until Deseret Flat disappeared. There was an immediate revulsion to the sight that had left him almost willing to play the coward, even if it meant explaining double his losses to his already over-charitable father. He stalked back some yards down the overgrown dirt street as he tried to decide what to do, pacing as if to set his mind in motion. It eventually occurred to him that it might do well to confirm that the damn thing was what he thought it was before he did anything rash.

He checked every glass-paned window of the big house before he went back in, half sure that any moment some madman was going to leap from the growing shadows and make bad work of him. After assuring himself as best he could that he was alone, he re-entered the domicile and examined the dead man on the floor.

He found him as strange a sight at second glance, for whomever had done the deed had fulfilled that impossible judgement of Portia and cut flesh from flesh without shedding a drop of blood. The man had been young, barely as old as Art if he reckoned correctly, and were it not for the blunt plane of muscle and bone that stretched across his neck, Quincey might've mistaken him for some archaic statue. His skin was whiter than marble or snow, and had been cut by nature's hand into that shape of ideal youth so lauded by the Pagan world of old. He was extraordinarily handsome, even in death. His ragged golden hair framed his blank face like a halo, and there was something both monstrous and sublime in the picture it presented, something that drew both upon the exquisite agony of the saints and the unspeakable rites of ancient Euius.

As he looked him over, Quincey felt a dread completely unlike the surprised fear he had known at the first glimpse of the corpse. If the man weren't so _real_, so present and tangible in the dimming light, it would've been simple to accept him as Deseret Flat's ghost and hie back home, tail between his legs. Strange as the tableau was, however, the body seemed to be all matter, and Quincey could find nothing natural or supernatural to explain how it had got there, bloodless and undecayed in a town which had supposedly lain abandoned for years.

Steeling himself, he worked up the courage to touch the corpse, and found its flesh was cold, almost cooler than the summer air around him. Feeling a certain impiety in handling the body, Quincey awkwardly repositioned the youth's head to meet his neck and closed his eyes, thinking that the unnamed boy deserved some passing gesture of respect, whatever else might happen.

He leaned himself against the wall and wondered anew what was to be done. For all the strange sights he'd seen and all the dead men he'd buried, Quincey was at a bit of a loss. Somebody had murdered this man, and he had an uneasy feeling that they would return in time. It was a simple enough question of self-preservation to take the precaution of being elsewhere. Still, something much more than stubbornness made him want to stay and see an end to whatever had happened, foolish as it was. He'd too much of an adventuring spirit, he supposed, for it really to be otherwise, and as he slumped down into a sitting position, he almost wished that Art were around to appeal to his better sense.

Thus, while he made no real resolution to do so, he felt that his decision to stay was nevertheless settled by the time the sun finally fell. If whatever it was came back, Quincey would have to wager on his guns.

"We'll see this night though, you and I," he said solemnly to the corpse, feeling quite the fool for doing so as he barred the door and found a good position in which he might conceal himself as he waited.

* * *

After spending an uncounted number of tense minutes or hours ready for some fiend to step across the threshold, Quincey awakened suddenly, realizing to his horror that he'd fallen asleep at some point. A few squares of pale moonlight shone steadily onto the floor, but despite their presence, the room around him seemed a mess of blackness, its features receding into the dark as his eyes looked in vain for the corpse which he had been guarding.

There was an unreality to the whole situation, and he realized as he stood up how loudly his movements sounded against a backdrop of perfect silence. The night air seemed dead all around him. The crickets had gone quiet, and no other insect or night bird made the slightest announcement of their presence. His hand shook as he grabbed for his gun and his bowie, and he felt a dull conviction that something dreadful was about to occur.

Some force, fast and light as the air around him, seemed to flit back and behind him as he stepped forward, and he could feel the unsteady beat of his heart pulse through him as he suddenly began to wonder if he wasn't alone. Nothing else moved in the darkness – nothing except himself – but a fearful presence seemed to hover beside him as he walked towards the rough location of the door. He stopped to turn, but the icy arms of the unseen creature grabbed him before he could move, pinning him back with such sudden and definite force that Quincey felt as though he were in the embrace of a piece of ironwork. He tensed as he felt somebody's head bury itself into his neck, his heart pounding as he felt the sharp dint of teeth graze across his skin, and then ever so slowly withdraw.

"You shouldn't be here!" a soft voice hissed into Quincey's ear. "This place isn't for you!"

"I didn't know..." Quincey tried to sound calm and probably failed. His vision had trouble keeping pace as the thing behind him loosed its grip and pulled him round to bring them face to face. Everything was faster than it should be, faster than anything had a right to be.

"You didn't, did you?"

He looked at the white waxen face staring back at him and felt bizarrely unsurprised that it should be that of the dead man. He was whole again, his head firmly resting on his shoulders as though they had never been parted, although there was still an unreality to his features that could not help but bring Quincey's mind back round to death: a sense that their perfection still betrayed some unspoken perversity.

"You won't ask," the youth said solemnly. "I have no interest in doing what I would need to if you did."

Quincey silently nodded his assent, not entirely knowing which of the myriad questions on his mind he was to suppress.

"Right then..." He took his hands from the man. "I suppose it falls to me to get you out of here."

"I can leave on my own." Quincey began, "I swear I..."

"You can't," the youth interjected firmly, "No matter how far you ride, no matter what direction... they'll find you on the prairie, trust me."

Quincey blinked, feeling inwardly chilled at the man's mention of some nebulous "they."

"I s'pose, sir..." he began haltingly, "that you'd know best on that count."

The young man laughed for a moment, his impossibly white skin stark against the black backdrop of the room around them. "That's the one wise thing I suppose you've done tonight, stranger."

"Morris," Quincey said as politely as he could, extending a hand. "Quincey Morris."

"A pleasure," the man said, taking his hand in a grip as cold as clay, "and may I thank you for having done me a good turn, sir."

Quincey tipped his hat, not wanting to say anything that might acknowledge the queer nature of the service rendered. While he remained a long way from trusting whatever strange being it was which could survive the loss of its head, he had a sense that the words intentionally not spoken between them hinted as something far worse than he'd already witnessed. There was enough weirdness to his night already that he was content to let a dead man dictate his next move.

The stranger's eyes met his in the dark, and Quincey tried not to flinch at their color: an unmistakable and unnatural bright red that seemed to bleed into the darkness surrounding it. The world appeared to slow down around him as he felt the youth lift him from the ground with a swoop of his arm and sling him over his shoulder as though he were a sack of flour, and all at once the night air was rushing past them, with the house and soon after all of Deseret Flat itself fading into invisibility on the distant horizon

"My horse..." Quincey managed to blurt out in the sudden rush of motion.

"It's already gone."

Quincey asked no question after that. There seemed a fairy-tale logic to the surreal events of the night, and he knew one shouldn't interrogate one's benefactors in such stories. Don't call attention to a troll-maid's tail. Don't ask the swan knight his name. Whatever the man was, he could carry him thus like a babe in arms and run still faster than any animal of which Quincey knew, and as such he was in no mind to offer offense.

And so they flew into the dark and across the prairie in silence, Quincey hanging his arms across the back of the tireless runner that held him. Despite his bizarre predicament, he felt an irrepressible sense of calm about the whole proceeding, and in time, as the endless silent monotony of the passing landscape ceased to hold his attention, he felt his eyes close comfortably once again as the unearthly creature ran beneath him, feet barely seeming to skim the ground.

* * *

The sky was purple again when Quincey awakened for the second time, roused by the shock of being rudely cast to the earth. Looking around him, Quincey saw the familiar landmarks of civilization, with a beaten dirt road extending down towards the town from which he'd initially set out.

"It took me three damn days to get out there," he said with a groan.

"I know." the man replied, showing the faintest hint of a grin.

"I don't suppose I can ask what the hell any of this means now, can I?"

"You could."

Quincey lifted himself up from the ground, brushing the yellow prairie dust from himself as he did.

"I'll take that to mean I could, but you wouldn't answer."

There was no reply.

"Well then, do you know what happened back in '78? It was sort of the reason I was poking around where I apparently ought not be."

"I can tell you that you shouldn't look for any of them."

"That so?"

"I can tell you it was quick, if you had any attachments. Nobody had time for half-a-thought before it was over."

Quincey clenched his teeth, imagining the man's unnatural fleetness at play in a dozen different macabre scenarios: something near fast as lightning flashing by and leaving that maze of empty houses and unfinished work.

"I assume the same happened to subsequent visitors?"

"It did."

"And what about me?"

The stranger cocked his head to one side thoughtfully. "As I said, Mr. Morris, I felt I owed you a courtesy."

"For putting your head back on, you mean..."

Quincey, now seemingly safe, decided to take the bull by the horns. He registered no surprise, of course, when the strange man again said nothing, his eyes glowing like dim coals against the backdrop of the slow rising sun.

"Right. I ought've expected as much," Quincey said with a sigh. "Can you tell me anything though... anything at all. I was there on a bet, and I'd like at least a bit more of a story to tell now that I've got a horse on top of the rest of my losses."

"Pardon me for saying so, but you're a bit of a fool, Mr. Morris. A lucky fool, but a fool nevertheless."

"I don't think any man who knows me would disagree with you on that count."

"If its a story you're looking for, you might want to take it 'pon yourself to warn others not to follow in your footsteps. Those that loiter in Deseret Flat's shadow don't take kindly to trespass."

"I s'pose I might, but I don't reckon anyone will believe me."

The sun was continuing its sluggish assent, turning the purpled reds of the sky to a hazy peach. The stranger squinted at the growing light and ran a hand through his hair. Impulsively, he turned to Quincey and again extended his hand.

"I'd best be going," he said flatly.

Quincey gave him a firm shake, and felt some sort of farewell die in his mouth as the stranger vanished, turning back into the prairie fast enough that there was barely time to register his flight before the his body was a pale dot on the horizon. Squinting, Quincey saw what seemed a sudden glint of light on the plain as the runner passed through a yellow patch of sunlight, shining like a mirror for a moment before he finally disappeared from view.

Quincey turned his head toward the road. It took him a few seconds to look down at his hand, where the weight of the man's cold grip had seemed to linger upon leaving. There, in the center of his palm, rested a single clipped coin. Examining it closely, he found it dated 1708, and marked with a seal he could only suppose must be some Spanish device.

* * *

It wasn't proof to skeptic, of course, but men who drank their fill of tall tales concerning Stodd's horde and the ghosts of Deseret Flat weren't inclined to question, particularly when Quincey added his own account of the red-eyed man to the table. The bet was ultimately declared void to all parties' satisfaction. Quincey freely admitted having spent less than a night in the haunted town before one of its residents evicted him, while the various gentlemen of the watering hole proved satisfied that there had been enough of a brush with the supernatural to put off demanding the brash adventurer pay up. Only Arthur voiced his belief that Quincey had finally developed a knack for telling fables, and he did so in private, garnering little response before his companion retorted with the requisite quote from Hamlet's first act and a smile.

As for the stranger, he returned to the place from which he'd set out in near as much time as it had taken him to leave, and arrived at the haunted threshold of Deseret Flat just as the sun began to sink behind the mountains, the evening dark casting a veil over the glare of his granite flesh. True to his prediction, the horse was gone, and the dull copper scent of animal blood lay heavy on the sand and soil. He felt himself hesitate for but a moment as he walked the long path back to Stodd's house, and opening the door he laid himself down upon the floor, ready to await whatever was to come.

In the distance he heard them, the breathless beat of frenzied footfalls from the distant wild. They were coming to reclaim him, and he knew how little his mistress thought of mercy. Whatever had led the hapless adventurer to this city of the dead, a lucky star was hanging over him. He had to come on the day when the only watchman was paying a penalty.

He remembered her words, soft and mellifluous as always. "Your strength is what has made you soft." He'd felt her rage, simmering under her always elegant exterior, and thought for a few fleeting seconds of the old man on the plain, whose brief unlife had been spared for a half-hour by his reluctance. It was always the fearless that gave him trouble, those who greeted death with passivity rather than terror. He supposed it reminded him of himself in a way, standing stoically as her ruby red lips ripped through his flesh and muscle. He had felt her hand knot his hair as she held him up gorgon-like before the others. "Watch and heed. No one is exempt."

They continued on their way back, nearer and nearer... within the town proper now. He tapped the wood beneath him, and heard the hollow echo that foretold their dwindling cache. Gold, like bodies and blood, was a necessary resource, and he reckoned that they'd tap this well dry in another year or two. Perhaps she'd deal more gently with his latest act of rebellion, given the circumstances. This outpost wasn't worth the hassle and he'd said as much before. Nettie agreed with him.

No. He knew better, and preparing himself for the approaching moment, he loosed the top button of his shirt, exposing the pale white collar of bite marks that cross-hatched his neck to the elemental air around him. He thought for a moment that he could already feel her, anger burning like a brand as its bearer rushed towards him, and he wondered if she would bid him hunt down the stranger who had so unwittingly ended his punishment. He hoped not, or he hoped that if it befell him that young Mr. Morris would have the good sense to get as far away from Deseret Flat as his mortal frame could manage.

"Jasper," she called in voice light as a cobweb, suddenly appearing on the doorstep. "It is good you came back."

"I am a gentleman," he replied with a mirthless smile.

"You cause a great deal of trouble for being one." Not an atom of rage showed in her face as she approached, her petite frame swishing across the floor. "Tell me why it must be so."

"Gentlemen pay their debts, ma'am," he sighed as he bowed his head. "I'd be grateful if you let me get back to paying mine as regards you."

Maria said nothing, and he closed his eyes in submission, waiting for her to begin.


End file.
